The Color Red
by OpalescentStorm
Summary: In the end, you're there with yourself and the truth to keep you company, and you've got the power to make of it what you will. Tenten and Neji. Nejiten.


She's wearing red today.

Red is the color to wear for Valentine's day, right? Love and all those crazy things. Red for roses and true love and pretty sayings that don't mean a damn.

And she knows that she's supposed to wear red. It's the first day of the Chinese New Year, after all. Red is an auspicious color. Supposed to scare away nightmares–isn't it?–even though everyone knows the bad dreams never truly leave, just take breaks.

She's wearing red today, and she's singing her lover to sleep.

Stop.

Wait.

Rewind.

Because she put on a white shirt this morning, like every morning.

Because there's accompaniment to her singing, and it isn't sweet and soft.

Because his breath is not the steady intake of the tired but ragged, painful to her ears.

Mental shields try to slide up against prevailing memory, but her masochistic thoughts have a mind of their own, want to see behind the lies. Half of her grasps and reaches and aches for the truth, to know what's really going on, but her other half keeps a slippery hold on misconstrued dreams. So she he rails against the falsities and beats at her mental shields, tears the fabrications with her scraped and bloody nails and longs for something real.

The truth hurts more than the earth-shaking epiphany that the entire world is crumbling and the fact that Konoha is falling and the feeling that she's _scared_.

Oh.

Truthfully.

She's not wearing red because she chose to. And if she's rocking him to sleep, it's not the sleep that one can easily wake from.

Memories come back in torrents, ripping through the scabs and scars to leave new, painful furrows in their wake. Too late she wants to slam the damns back in place, to stop any more damage, but it's useless. She can't end the consequences of her choices.

It was a katana through his blind spot. An assailant got lucky, she supposes; there was no way he or she could have known about the one degree of vulnerability.

Lucky in two ways, she recognizes numbly, because his murderer had picked the exact moment when she wasn't guarding him. She'd been otherwise occupied with a man who held a hideous combination of extreme chakra reserves, sheer force, and pure recklessness. And so she hadn't been able to stop the man she loved from being impaled.

She'd taken him into her arms and fled to a spot of near-peace, knowing she'd have to return to the battle sooner or later. Away from medics; she knew there was nothing left to be done for him, no way of fixing such a wound.

This, then, is the truth. Whether she wants it or not.

So she remembers, and her song quavers and breaks as one tear and another fall gently onto his body. He's still breathing, but not for long. This she knows. All her wishes meld to one: that somehow she could ease the harshness of his breath, make his last moments soft as the sky.

A thought flickers across her mind, and she, impulsive in his last moments, brushes his lips gently with hers.

For Valentine's Day is always about love, but sometimes there are massacres.

He shifts his hand, stretches his fingers towards her, but he doesn't have the strength so she grabs his hand and holds it in her own bloodied one. "I love you. Watch me fly." His last words are simple and clear, though quiet, and a tiny smile falls upon his lips once the last syllable drops.

While he breathes his last, his beautiful eyes lift skyward, to her.

For the Chinese New Year is always about hope, but it admits the presence of demons.

She makes herself see the massacres and the demons. And then she can force herself to recognize the catharsis of love and hope.

Along with him has gone the pain, her wild resistance. Because she loves him, she cannot play pretend and imagine that he's still alive and she's singing and wearing red of her own volition.

Yes, it's foolish to say she doesn't hurt, that she won't cry herself to sleep for days and weeks and months and maybe even years. But she's done with twisting the truth and making herself see beautiful things where there's only ugliness and a release in naked truth. Because he would have rather seen life as it was.

And she sees that he can fly. Why then, would she despair?

**AN (at the end this time!): Sorry for all the doom and gloom and despair. The prompt was Valentine's Day and Chinese New Year, and wow. Yeeeeah, love that angst. XP Well, the next one-shot will be nice and fluffy, I promise. I already know. 3**

**Oh, and -constructive- critisism is very much welcomed because I'll be entering this in a contest and want it to be as good as possible. **


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